This week we tackle the question of death and celebration. As atheists, we view death as the end of existence. Does it naturally follow that all death is a tragedy? If we allow ourselves to feel some amount of pleasure in the death of someone we abhor, is that behavior abhorrent? We start with some recent deaths and then look at some people whose deaths would, in general, be considered an absolute good. Philosophy and ethics abound in this thoughtful episode.

2 Responses to Episode 195 – Joy and Death

This earth is all we got, and if someone who causes more evil than good (yes as defined by me as more pain than pleasure to other humans) leaves it I consider this a net good for those who still exist. If someone is religious, why do they even care if a person died anyway? I never got that one. Why not dance? We all exist forever and you will see all dead people again in eternity so who cares?

When Andrew Breitbart died I literally danced as he personally was responsible for the destruction for an organization that was a net good on this earth and that I had worked for (ACORN long story if you ever want to hear it).

Also, as a side note I am quite irritated that each elderly liberal supreme court justice has not taken this opportunity to retire during Obama’s administration. As much as I respect their rulings, that is pure ego right there.

Well I don’t have a real background in ethics, but I have studied it a bit, and comment on that is that I had a different understanding of the difference between moral absolutism and moral relativism.

My impression, and the terms are ill enough defined that perhaps it’s just that, was that moral absolutism just says that there are universal moral truths, whereas moral relativism says that different things are moral vs. immoral for different people, or maybe different cultures.

Put that way, both pro-LGBT-rights and anti-LGBT-rights people might be moral absolutists, they just disagree on what the moral truth is. The pro-LGBT-rights person believes it is universally immoral to discriminate based on sexual orientation, whereas the anti-LGBT-rights person believes it is universally immoral to be non-hetero.

I’ve often thought that in a way, some Christians are more morally relativist than many atheists, because Christians can come close to saying “morality exists because of God”, i.e., our morals exist because of what God wants, and if God had wanted something different, that’s what would be moral. Many atheists, on the other hand, believe that what is moral and what is immoral exist independently of any being anywhere.